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Sunday, March 18, 2018

While there is no
real cure to help you stay happy forever, certain lifestyle changes can slowly
and steadily get you there

Imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from zero at
the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible
life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst. On which step
of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time? This
so-called happiness ladder is famously used as a way to measure and compare
happiness across the globe.

The scale is intended for use at the public policy
level, but there are lessons to learn at the personal level as well. Find a
sustaining and satisfying job; do your best to live in a happy place; surround
yourself with social support; take care of your health; and be generous (in
spirit, time and money) in order to pave your own personal road to happiness.

Good things happen in the
bedroom

A lot of potential for happiness happens in the
bedroom. It’s the place where we sleep, have sex and retreat for quiet
contemplation — all of which are activities that can improve happiness. As a
result, many people who study and write about happiness encourage people to
focus on life in the bedroom. A “living well” index created by British
researchers found that the two strongest indicators of wellness were sleep and
sex. People who feel rested most of the time are happier than people who don’t.
The same can be said for people who are happy with their sex lives — they are
happier overall than people with less-than-satisfactory sex lives.

Do’s and don’ts

So, as you think about your living space and how it’s
affecting your happiness, make the bedroom a high priority: Turn your bedroom
into a luxury hotel suite. Think of the feeling you get when you escape to a
nice hotel on vacation. Capture that in your home every day.

Invest in comfort. Buy comfortable sheets, pillows
and bedding and a quality mattress.

Don’t skimp on window treatments. Blocking out light
will help you sleep better.

Remove the television. Bedrooms are havens for sleep
and contemplation, not screen time.

Be generous

Generosity makes people happier. Generosity is one of
the six variables found to consistently influence happiness in the World
Happiness Report. And several studies have found that people who behaved
generously were happier compared to people who made selfish decisions. In fact,
just thinking about being generous and kind triggers a happiness reaction in
our brains.

Pets can make you happy

Psychologists conducted a series of experiments to
determine the role that pets play in our happiness. They found that pet owners
were happier, healthier and better adjusted than non-owners. Pet owners said
they received as much support from their pets as they did from family members.
And people who were emotionally closer to the pets also had deeper ties to the
humans in their lives.

Dog owners who felt a strong connection to their pets
were happier and healthier. And in one expressive writing exercise, writing
about pets was just as effective as writing about a friend when it came to
staving off feelings of rejection, according to the report published by the
American Psychological Association.

Spend less time
charging your tab and more time watching, listening, and playing games on the
go with these Android devices

If you are looking for a tablet
and thinking about an Android device, there are so many choices and variants to
pick from. Some Android tablets have 10-inch screens, others seven, while the
rest land somewhere in between with a handful pushing the boundaries past 10
inches. Here are some of the best Android tablets you can buy today.

1 Samsung
Galaxy Tab S3

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S3 is one of
the favourite Android tablets right now and replaces the Galaxy Tab S2. This
tablet is preferred thanks to a powerful processor and an excellent display
that’s prepped to show you HDR content, something even the iPad can’t do yet.
There’s an S-Pen stylus included in the box.

The Huawei MediaPad T3 10’s
aluminium back plate and rounded edges feel wonderful in your hands and make it
easy to use. The tablet is powered by the entry-level Qualcomm Snapdragon 425
quadcore processor which is capable of handling a set number of tasks including
some heavy games.

It is packed with media-focused
features and sports a distinctive design. There’s a built-in stand to take the
heft off your hands, while the integrated projector means you can enjoy big
screen entertainment away from your TV. However, the screen exhibits enough
sharpness so you won’t need to use the projector anyway.

The low price and sturdy design
make the Amazon Fire a great choice to give to a kid — in fact, Amazon’s even
built a (pricier) version specifically for children. Even for grown-ups, the
Amazon Fire far exceeds expectations, with a bright 7.0-inch screen, impressive
battery life paired with reasonable performance.

If you need cellular connectivity
in your tablet, the Primetime is an affordable option for consuming content
from AT&T’s paid streaming services. It has a sharp 1080p display,
dualfront speakers, and an impressive battery.

Duolingo has turned the gamification of education into a model for
success, winning over 200 million users—an impressive number for a learning
app, as investors appear to recognize: The company was valued at $700 million
in July 2017. In 2017, it grew its base 30%, to 25 million monthly users, who
can take 75 free courses in 29 languages. The company first solidified its
market lead with a flashcards app called Tinycards. Duolingo’s first foray
outside of languages, Tinycards uses a mix of repetition, animation, and
positive affirmation as a means of teaching users virtually anything from human
anatomy to Pokémon names and statistics. And because users can make their own
shareable decks on any topic of their choosing, Tinycards taps into another
urge to compete—and show off trivia knowledge—between friends, making it the
perfect education platform for swipe-left millennials.

There are over 100
types of coffees that you can sip with an equal number of dishes.

There are cafes, takeaways, drive-ins and fine dining
meals. Melbourne is among the food capitals of the Southern Hemisphere. A
stroll down the bustling streets of Central Business District (CBD), shows you
how settlers from across the world have brought in their own food influences,
set up shops here and started dishing out their unique cuisines, adding to the
fun, edgy and eclectic mix of flavours!

MORNING CUPPA

You cannot miss the strong coffee culture of the
city. A fresh baked doughnut with a better than usual latte, espresso or
cappuccino, is an ideal start to the day. All for just $1.99! You can also have
an ample dose of long black, flat white, batch brew and filter coffee. One can
smell the city’s love for coffee everywhere.

People love to walk around with their takeaway coffee
glasses. Old warehouses and workshops have been turned in to coffee shops. On a
food tour across the CBD, our guide informed that there are over 100 types of
coffees that you can sip with equal number of dishes.

SIMMERING POT

Italian, German, Polish, Irish, Indian, Southeast
Asian, Middle Eastern or Indian, you name a cuisine and you’ll find it here.
Preparations here are truly contemporary and presentation styles are American
meaning you get familiar flavours served in big portions. The best bit for us
was that even popular Indian preparations such as butter chicken, paneer tikka
or dal taste superior due to fresh ingredients being used.

SOAK UP EXPERIENCES

Do not overspend on your stay and spend instead on
food experiences that are just a short drive from the city – like vineyards,
chocolate factories, honey farms and cheese cellars. There are experiences such
as ‘choose and use’ best carrots or visit to a strawberry farm to pick your own
berries and have it prepared as the way you like it! You can also try your hand
at Mexican cake making or learn the history of Italian and Greek cuisine in the
city. There are options such as visit a kitchen garden next to your restaurant
and pick your own ingredients or decide which cheese will be the best topping
for your pizza. One of their most popular city tours is in fact enjoying a
three-course meal on a colonial tramcar turned into a restaurant as you
navigate the city.

The inaugural ET
Women’s Forum showcased how women are leading change and supporting others in
their journey to become equal stakeholders in an unequal world. The confluence of
select voices with their own stories of conviction and courage outlined how
women can have parity in ease of access to resources and opportunities and get
themselves heard better

An eclectic mix of distinct voices converged in
Mumbai on Friday as some of the brightest minds came together to chart out a
road map to unleash the power of half a billion—the women of India. At the
inaugural ET Women’s Forum, presented by Facebook, global influencers and
champions of woman’s empowerment held out the promise of change with their
stories and inspired women to become part of the global and national
decisionmaking.

The confluence of select voices with their own
stories of conviction and courage outlined how women at work, in sports, in
art, in politics, in the development sector, on company boards, as
entrepreneurs, in the family business, can get themselves heard better to
become equal stakeholders in an unequal world.

A worrisome statistic caught the attention of many a
speaker at the forum. The World Economic Forum in its Global Gender Gap Report
2017 said that some of the most challenging gender gaps remain in the economic
sphere. At the current rate of change, closing the economic gender gap will now
take 217 years.

“To my mind, that is 216 too many,” said Cherie
Blair, founder of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, in her inaugural
address at the forum. Blair said women are so much more than a one-dimensional
statistic, adding that the world is at a tipping point in the history of women.

“India has a precious opportunity that it is
overlooking and underutilising. And that opportunity is the boundless potential
of Indian women as business owners, job creators, and leaders in their
community,” Blair told the audience.

The speakers and panellists who laid the groundwork
for tapping the power of half a billion included Andrea Jung, president and
CEO, Grameen America; Annette Dixon, World Bank vice-president, South Asia;
Fawzia Koofi, Afghan MP and women’s rights activist; family business scions;
startup founders; women politicians; social change agents; women in cinema,
sports; trailblazers and outliers.

Across the wide array of fields, there was optimism
even when the statistics looked grim.

Talking about women on company boards, Jung said,
“Having been the only woman on a board for years, one woman on boards is not
enough--there is strength in numbers.” Something that found resonance with
former Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) chairman M Damodaran, who
advocated having at least two women on each company board, at least one of whom
should be independent.

Dixon talked about ways to remove barriers for women
in the labour market as this was an opportune time to revisit and reform
outdated legislation and policies that act as deterrents. “Fostering the creation
of better jobs, providing support for the child and elder care, and ensuring
mobility to and from work can remove significant structural barriers for women
to access employment,” she said.

A recurring theme at the forum was women learning to
lead the charge and supporting other women when it came to dealing with the
issues they face. Be it reservation for women in politics, finding mentors at
work, seeking funding for their startups, empowering other women as leaders.

Blair exhorted women to think inclusively, act
inclusively and enlist male allies. Jung spurred women to fire themselves on
Friday evening and rehire themselves on Monday morning. This would allow women
to reinvent themselves and it would act as a catalyst for that reinvention.
Women are born with an extra guilt gene that needs to be fixed, said Shobana
Kamineni, president, Confederation of Indian Industry, who spoke on the complex
yet important issue of ‘Breaking the Boys’ Club’.

For the audience and participants, the event, whose
celebration partner was Diageo, was a medley of diversity and uniqueness. Such
as when Miss World 2017 Manushi Chhillar put forth her perspective between the
sessions on women entrepreneurs and getting women on boards.

Tor A Dahlstrom, consul, deputy head of mission,
Norwegian consulate, Mumbai, and one of the few male audience members at the
event, said, “It was a very interesting session which threw a lot of light on
Indian society in general. It was an educational experience of sorts for me.”

Anjali Verma, a member of the audience said: “I have
worked in India and across the Middle East and Canada but I found this event to
be unique and the only one of its kind. This forum can go on to be a game
changer in the future.”

For panelist Aanchal Thakur, who is an alpine skier,
it was all about drawing inspiration. “We got to know each other, and we got
inspired by stories of people across spheres,” she said--words that echoed the
underlying sentiment of the daylong gathering.

While many companies
are striving to become agile, only four percent of survey respondents have
completed an organization-wide transformation, the latest McKinsey research
finds. The No 1. problem they cite is culture.

Anecdotal evidence
supports this culture challenge. The former COO of ING, a financial services
giant at the forefront of applying agility enterprise-wide, reflected that
“culture is perhaps the most important element of this sort of change.” He
noted that ING has spent “an enormous amount of energy and leadership time
trying to role model the sort of behavior—ownership, empowerment, customer
centricity—that is appropriate in an agile culture.”

For example, consider
the matter of delegation. Companies large and small struggle with effectively
delegating work. A manager, who let’s assume gets a decision correct nine out
of ten times, hands off a task to a worker who is right eight out of ten times
– at least to start, Thus, the manager determines that making slightly fewer
good decisions sometimes is a price worth paying to improve efficiency, speed,
and empowerment.

Here’s the rub: The
first time the worker makes a decision that differs from what the manager would
make, the worker gets feedback. Depending on how it is delivered, the feedback
can trigger a level of fear and anxiety that prompts the worker to avoid a
future misstep.

·Imagine that this first mistake was on
decision No. 10. The designated worker has made nine good decisions since
having been delegated the authority to make the decision, matching the
manager’s level of proficiency, but has made them faster and more efficiently
because the manager wasn’t involved.

·Then on decision 10, there was a not-so-good
outcome. After getting a slap on the wrist, or “feedback” which triggered
performance anxiety, for making a mistake on decision 10, the next time the
worker likely will check first with the manager. Soon, the delegation
evaporates and turns into escalation.

In a complex,
hierarchical organization, you can imagine that lots of decisions escalate up
the ladder multiple times, going high up the chain of command.

So, what happens when
an “empowered” cross-functional team tries to move at high velocity within a
slow culture of escalated decisions? Agility dies. This is why Amazon CEO Jeff
Bezos’ notion of decision velocity – and the need for managers to “disagree and
commit” – is so important.

Organizational agility
potentially represents an existential crisis for middle management. The traditional
middle manager is often in place to communicate, direct, and control. The agile organization tosses
that aside and instead, suggests that traditional ways of planning aren’t that
useful. For these organizations to thrive, they still need visionary leaders
looking at the big picture, but much planning now is emergent and bottom-up.
The value of middle managers controlling things and passing information up and
down the chain of command starts looking not so valuable. If you wonder where
the resistance to change is likely to come from, the clue is here.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Harsh Goenka's
group has recently adopted ‘happiness’ as its tagline, and even aligned its
policies to this new outlook. Here's why, and how it works

If there is one thing RPG Enterprises chairman Harsh
Goenka would want to tell employees, it’s to get a good night’s sleep every
evening. But that, he says, can only happen if you work at a place that is
stress-free, fun and keeps you happy. “I value happiness in life, and I want
our employees, our customers, our suppliers and our shareholders to be happy,”
says Goenka. “When you come to work on Monday, you should look forward to it.”
This is the main idea behind the group recently adopting, (and earlier this
month, rolling out) its new corporate mantra Hello Happiness. This tagline will
now apply to RPG as well as all its subsidiaries like CEAT, KEC International,
Zensar Technologies and others. And it isn’t just a branding initiative: The
group is now aligning all its HR and people policies, as well as its office
best practices, to this idea.

While companies are falling over themselves to adopt
clever taglines — which often turn out to be obtuse and jargonistic — Goenka
wants to keep it simple. He said as much in a Town Hall two years ago, when he
stated that he wanted RPG to become, not necessarily the largest organisation,
but certainly the happiest. “When you see the corporate taglines of
manufacturing companies, you see certain kinds of words, like ‘growth’,
‘quality’ and ‘technology’, being used,” says Goenka. “This is typical
corporate-speak. I believe each company should have a tagline that best
captures its aspirations and capabilities. And that’s what Hello Happiness
reflects. It’s about what we stand for — authenticity and a workplace that is
fair and treats people well.” The new mantra is usually accompanied by (an
arguably cheesy) ‘square’ smiley, and will be reiterated through the launch of
various branding exercises like ad films and appropriate literature.

“Happiness is not a one-day exercise. It is built
over a series of events and experiences,” says S Venkatesh, President, Group
HR. “The particle of happiness keeps growing when you are able to deliver a
joyous moment or a positive experience to employees – such as, say, when a
staff member sees that a policy is employeefriendly, or has an exchange with a
manager that is career-enhancing. You can’t deliver happiness in one day. It
has to be built up over time.”

The group — which is known for its employee
engagement — has sharpened its policies with this in mind. “The employee is at
the heart of the company and all its policies,” Goenka insists. When it impacts
more than 14,000 employees, one has to tread with caution.

Encouragement begins at home

To begin with, the group takes retention very
seriously by offering in-house career-pathing and growth opportunities for its
young talent. Rather than hire people from the outside, youngsters who have
been in the company for a while, are given the first right of refusal for a
next-level role. Mentoring is an open, two-way street: Anyone can walk into her
line manager’s room to discuss and resolve issues.

Better work hours = greater
productivity

The group has done away with its attendance muster;
employees no longer need to swipe in and out. In fact, with their seniors’
support, they can construct their own working hours around the core office
hours of 11am to 4 pm. Like many other companies, staff gets the option of
working from home or availing of flexible working hours, and if they’ve been in
the organisation for at least four years, they can even take a two-month
sabbatical. “We trust our staff to have a conscience and take responsibility
for their work,” says Goenka. “If you police people, they’ll find ways to beat
the system. But if you trust them and let them be, they will deliver.”

No honorifics, please

The biggest challenge, for any traditional,
family-run business, is to try and transform itself by changing its
well-entrenched work ethos and culture. Alongside an openness at all levels,
the group has also decided to adopt honorific-free modes of address. Some weeks
ago, Goenka shot off a mail to staff saying he would henceforth be addressed
only by his first name. He even put out a piggybank seeking fines from anyone
who did otherwise, and collected some amount to donate to charity. “We also
strive to provide an apolitical atmosphere, and that creates a lot of
happiness,” adds Venkatesh. “People want to fight business issues, not
organisational issues. You want to devote all your energy to bringing in
business, not battling internal politics, bipartisanism and nepotism, which is
the bane of most companies today. The arbitrariness of such practices makes
your feel stressed out and sapped of energy.”

Happiness has been a key consideration in RPG’s
workplace philosophy for a while now. Two years ago, when the group had
launched its vision, it was ‘Unleash Talent. Touch Lives. Outperform. Be
Happy’. Now, however, happiness and the emoticon adorn all the company’s vision
and mission statements. “The emoji gave our vision statement a distinct
character,” says Goenka. “Everybody remembers it.” It was also clearly time for
a new look. RPG’s previous mantra, from four years ago, was ‘going for growth’.
Reflecting on it, Goenka says that could’ve been a tagline for just about any
company. “Besides, we achieved that,” he says.The group’s revenue growth has
been at 26.8 per cent CAGR in the last three years, while its profit growth in
the corresponding period has been 42.8 per cent. Its market cap has also grown
at 44 per cent in the last three years, and Goenka adds, the way things are
going, the group will finish the year at over Rs 25,000 crore. The group has
also made several overseas acquisitions in the last few years.

Accommodating changing
priorities

Part of widening its appeal and making itself a
satisfying workplace for a younger generation — more specifically Millennials —
is the group’s recent thrust to participate in more future-facing ventures. It
has funded start-ups, a pharma distribution company, e-commerce, cybersecurity
ventures and is even looking at investing in artificial intelligence. It is
also encouraging its young managers to turn entrepreneurs by promising them
funds. “Millennials think very differently about the workplace from the way we
did,” says Goenka. “They have no attachment to assets, and want to work for
socially-responsible companies.” If that’s what makes them happy, Goenka
certainly doesn’t want to miss out.

To mainstream something like happiness, an internal
team of senior managers spent many months with all levels of employees, trying
to understand the policies that would — simply put — make them happy.
Brainstorming over several months yielded over 100 taglines, many of which were
so forbiddingly corporate that they had to be rejected. “It’s important for any
company to stand the test of time and be unpretentious,” says Goenka. “Your
brand promise should not be so aspirational that your employees can’t relate to
it. The most important constituent is your (work) family. If they think it’s
not what the company stands for, it just won’t work.” Now that’s an idea that
will make RPG staff very ha